“You take great risk.” Lex was careful not to allude to her being a woman. “To be hanged on a gibbet until death overcomes you would indeed be a sorry end for one so young.”
A hint of a smile graced the Lace Bandit’s lips. “How kind of you to worry over my safety, good sir. If you would please bring that sack to me, you can be on your way.”
Lex was tall, and he glimpsed her décolleté when the lady leaned over. What was more revealing than her bountiful bosom was a perfectly formed beauty mark in the shape of a heart. A tantalizing sight that spurred his blood rushing through his veins.
She snatched the sack and regained her upright posture, but not before their eyes met. Hers were the color of fossilized amber. Lex wondered what color of hair was hidden beneath the scarf and brown beaver shako hat. His fingers itched to tear the hat from her head and see what lay beneath, but he restrained his impulse, for it would not lead to a satisfying conclusion, more likely a bullet to his head as hestared down the barrel of a duck’s-foot pistol. The intriguing bandit stuffed the heavy coin pouch in her saddlebag.
“If you and your companion would please return to your coach, I will make my exit, bid you adieu, and send you on your way.”
Lex nearly laughed aloud. The little vixen was undoubtedly the politest highway robber in the kingdom. Incredibly amusing that she spoke with the clarity and education of the highborn, while disguising her voice to mimic a choirboy.It’s enough to set one’s mind wondering.
He bowed. “Come, Basil—we have been delayed long enough.” Over his shoulder he added, “Perhaps we shall meet again, m’lady.”
“I doubt that very much,” she said, and with a whispered encouragement, her horse reared and galloped away.
Lex leaned out the carriage window and watched her disappear. Not only an expert marksman, but a fine seat to boot. He was surprised that he felt a sense of regret as he watched her gallop away. Despite the fact that she had just robbed him at gunpoint, he’d been captivated by her allure and wanted to know why such a beautiful woman, who was clearly well born and spoke with intelligence, was driven to highway robbery. He hoped he did cross paths with her again. He felt a strange sense of protectiveness toward her. Given the risks she took, he didn’t want her to be captured or worse.
Stay safe, my beauty, and I hope we do meet again…
Chapter Two
Wiltshire House
Middlesex
Edwina Sinclair gallopedthrough the dense forest growth on Masquerade, her gray gelding. Her nimble steed jumped a hedge with ease and raced across an open meadow, where a tree-lined trail took her to the back entrance of the stables at Wiltshire House.
The baronetcy had been awarded to her great-great-great-grandfather by George I, and it was here that Edwina was born. Sadly, it was also where her parents had both died from typhus. When her parents became ill, they sent her to live with her grandmother, the dowager Baroness of Northumberland, at her ladyship’s country estate. Edwina survived, but unfortunately her brother had not. His death left her the only surviving heir to the baronetcy.
Upon her father’s untimely death, Edwina would have inherited the baronetcy immediately were it not for complications. At the time of her beloved papa’s death, she had not yet come of age, and at present, her grandmother, who’d returned with her to Wiltshire House once the typhus epidemic had dissipated, held the baronetcy in entailment until Edwina reached majority. The entailment her father had created would legally pass to her in a year. The entailment alsodecreed that the baronetcy’s lands would remain intact and not be sold off, protecting the estate from any marriage partner or profligate heir. The entailment also secured the baronetcy for any offspring of her marriage. Her father had wisely arranged for his property and estate to pass to his daughter upon his death so long as there was not a male heir, which there was not. Edwina felt the weight of this responsibility on her young shoulders, but she was resolute in her determination to uphold her father’s wishes.
Edwina led her magnificent steed Masq to his stall. She threw a bunch of carrots into his feed bucket and shut herself in her tack room before any of the grooms noticed she’d returned. She quickly disrobed, changed into her riding habit, and hid the mask and costume in her tack trunk. The pouch filled with coins she’d taken from her victims she stored in a false compartment hidden at the bottom of the trunk. It was filled with bags of coins that she’d relieved from other wealthy targets.
As a patroness of a parish orphanage at St. Albans in Middlesex and of the Foundling Hospital in the West End of London, she would deliver the bountiful gift to those who needed it most. Only last week, she’d struck gold and robbed a cruel landlord traveling to his country estate in Middlesex.
The St. Giles rookery was considered the worst in England, and Axel Hammond was the worst of the worst landlords of that blighted hell. He leased dozens of overcrowded, rickety tenement buildings infested with rats and buried amid noxious fumes on narrow alleys and streets. In these crumbling hovels, few lived beyond their twenties. Open sewers ran down the center of St. Giles’s putrid streets, where children played among drunkards, prostitutes, and thieves, and disease and degradation abounded. The poorly constructed hovels, stacked one against the other, were badly ventilated and without sanitation. There, the most destitute of London’s population lived in veritable rat traps amid abominable conditions of squalor and filth.
Axel Hammond enriched himself from the misery of those without a voice, and Edwina was driven by a fierce sense of justice and determined to give them that voice and more. She hoped to provide them with a way out of their wretchedness. She’d set her sights on punishing Hammond by stealing the wealth he took from the poor. She would be the hand of retribution, and her same helping hand would help provide for the forgotten, lifting them out of the hopelessness and destitution of their present existence.
Thinking about Hammond made her blood boil, and she put him out of her mind. It was much better to dwell upon the handsome gentleman whom she had robbed today. It was almost as if he could see behind her mask, which she knew he couldn’t.
Winnie studied herself in the mirror and stifled a giggle, remembering when the annoyance on his face turned to admiration. It was silly, but she could not stop thinking about the man who’d seemed more amused at being robbed by her than angered or afraid. Not to mention the audacity he’d had to eye her bosoms when she relieved him of the coin-filled pouch.
When their gazes met, the sparkle in his striking blue eyes had disconcerted her, while the strength of his chin and his dimpled smile caused a fluttering in her chest. His height was most impressive, and his broad shoulders had strained against the fine cut of his coat as he’d handed the sack to her. And his voice, so deep and resonant, had sounded intimate, as though they were the only two people in the world.
Her skin flushed at the memory. She’d had an instant and immediate desire to find out why he’d looked at her with such a gleam in his eye, as though they were dancing the quadrille at atonball.
Her reaction to him perplexed her, and she reminded herself that it was an unseemly response to feel a quivering inside for a total stranger. Nothing about his companion had captured her interest in such a profound way, though he was also quite handsome, so why thisridiculous attraction to the blue-eyed stranger? Their interaction, though brief, had left a deep impression that aroused her curiosity. And she could not help but wish their paths might cross again, under different circumstances.
She rubbed a dirty smudge from her cheek and smoothed her braided red hair.Almost presentable, but it will have to do.Winnie’s inner conflict between her public and private personae was a constant source of turmoil. She longed to feel the independence that would be hers when the baronetcy passed into her hands.
The handsome stranger invaded her thoughts again, as she recalled he knew right away she was a woman and not a male youth, despite her disguise and her attempt to deepen her voice. But that was nothing to fret over. Winnie had heard the rumors and exaggerated tales of the exploits of awomanhighway robber for months now. The Lace Bandit, a moniker given to her by the public, had even been written about in the press. It was a persona she had adopted to carry out her mission of redistributing wealth from the corrupt to the needy, and she was intrigued by the stranger’s interest in her alter ego.
The impertinent man’s parting words, that they would meet again, had not felt like a threat but rather a promise, which, given that she hadn’t revealed any way for him to trace her, was rather dashing on his part. It amused her immensely.
I admit his braggadocio was exhilarating, adding spice to my successful day and the doldrums of my evenings.
Next week, she would take the coach to St. Albans and deliver the monthly spoils to the workhouse and the orphanage she supported. Her rebellion, if one dared call it that, was born from the exciting folktales her mother had told her about Robin Hood, the medieval outlaw who took the bounty he stole from the rich and gave it to the poor.
